


Janet

by cupidsbow



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Original Character Death(s), Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-18
Updated: 2010-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:52:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupidsbow/pseuds/cupidsbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crack had opened in the air like a fiery cloaca, offering to birth Zhanget into a new world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Janet

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 14 Days of Love, 2010.

The crack had opened in the air like a fiery cloaca, offering to birth Zhanget into a new world. It was just as the whispered stories had told, shared mind-to-skin-to-mind in hushed thoughts as the members of her sowse piled together in sleep (in the too-brief moments when they could just be, and their thoughts could flow from one to another without the mindless breaks and blanknesses wrought by the whips and alien _radios_ the Lords so loved to use).

A fiery crack in the world, offering escape. Almost like the furnaces the Split-Tongue Lords demanded her people fill, day and day and night (and that was an escape some of her sowse had chosen, although Zhanget refused it, snout wrinkled in defiance).

She might almost have thought the flames had escaped the furnaces and raced into the mines, as they had once in her grandmother's time (burning everything in their path, and only dying when all else was dead). But the flames had not been blue with methane; the crack was red, red, bright red, like the sun during a flare, or the rising heat of love while claiming a mate.

When it had appeared, her sowse had all been far from her, up another level of the mine (she was being punished for not lowering her eyes when the Lords passed; forced to wade in the lowest reaches where the gas was thick and made her feel light-headed), and she had paused, staring at the crack -- just like the stories told -- but not quite brave enough to take its promise of escape all on her own.

And then the hated one, the sun-haired Lord with the empty eyes and scourging hand had raised his whip and Zhanget had cried out, screamed at the lick of it as it scraped her skin (scraped her mind), and she had run, then, run and leapt and taken the promise of rebirth, even though it would be all alone on a strange world, far from the gentle hum of her sowse.

She had not expected rapture or ease on the other side; she was not so young and foolish. But it was a harsh-edged world she found herself thrust into. Full of the sharp cuts of _radios_, and impatient _Humans_ who didn't want her sharing their world. And perhaps worst, a ragged, not-quite-home made up of the other sowseless who had also taken their chances and leapt; all of them with empty skins, and minds not quite able to mesh.

It was still better. Better to have made the leap.

The dark tunnels beneath the _Human_ lodges were quiet and toiless, and smelled a little like home. And the _Humans_ were horrible, but only in the way of thoughtless beasts, and not, mostly, with the pitiless meanness of the Lords.

Sometimes, though, a _Human_ would have sun-bright hair, and a raised hand and flashing teeth, and Zhanget would forget herself, forget everything but the lash, the fear, the way her sowse had wasted away, one by one, their sleeping pile smaller with each circuit of Grandmother Moon. And then she would bite and bite and bite until the raised hand fell, once and for all, and the hair was no longer bright, but dulled with red, and the fear of the scourge finally left her and she was once more alone, all alone with her quiet, homesick skin and solo thoughts.


End file.
